Love In The Darkest Dark
by Val-Creative
Summary: Extended scene for Voltron's capture by Ezor and Zethrid in Episode 3. Pidge tries to be brave about getting tortured and poisoned in front of the other paladins, even while they beg for Pidge to be released, and while Lance continues to fight to save her. /Season 7. Plance. Oneshot.


**.**

 **.**

Pidge's head spins.

Her skull echoes the impact against the brig's wall, doubling her vision before Pidge groans and clears it, blinking rapidly. Ezor's magenta claw tightens to Pidge's uniform-collar, but she doesn't slam Pidge anymore.

Lance remains on the ground, his teeth clenched and his skin heavily perspiring. Pidge wants to tell him _it's okay_ , _it'll be okay,_ but she doesn't even know if that's the truth. Coran hasn't come to rescue them yet, and Ezor is face-to-face with her. There's vicious, little gleam in her eye, like something similar to blood-lust.

 _Torture_.

It's what she wants to do to Pidge.

"Please… you don't need to do this," Romelle speaks up, low and pleading.

"Oh, I really do," Ezor murmurs, not tearing her eyes from Pidge's shocked and fearful gaze, cracking a wide smile. "In fact… I'm gonna enjoy it _so much_ …" One of her claw-nails brushes under Pidge's lip. "Now where is Lotor?"

Keith tenses up, his voice strained, "We _told_ you—"

A flash-flare of pain and Ezor's nail removes itself from embedding in Pidge's cheek, leaving a dribble of hot, fresh blood rolling down her pale skin. " _STOP IT_!" Lance yells at the top of his lungs, starting to tremble with his anger and earning him a kick to the gut by the sentry-guard pressing a weapon up against Lance's neck.

Pidge wants to scream it back directly at Lance, because he needs to be control of himself and keep his mouth shut before they decide hurt _him_ too. God, she doesn't want that.

Ezor's mouth widens open, exposing a twin row of fangs.

"I'm sure a few of you have heard of Necirius Venom?"

Pidge has absolutely no idea what she's talking about, and none of the other paladins apparently, but she does glimpse Allura and Krolia's expressions filling with dread.

"Very rare, very painful. Very deadly if you leave it unattended to a bleeding wound," Ezor says with a giggle, looking around at the prisoners. Zethrid watches on with a perceptive, wickedly amused grunt, folding her arms. Pidge shivers, feeling the same claw-nail dragging a little of her own blood across her cheek. "The only known beings to secrete the venom from their throat-glands is… _well_ …"

She trails off, gleefully regarding in the slow-building realization around her and then giving a deep, sputtering cough, her throat spasming wildly and then relaxing.

A gleam of milky-blue venom oozes on Exor's lips, mingling with her saliva.

" _Where_ is Lotor? How did you survive and where did you go?"

Zathrid's growl of a voice rises.

"He died in the quintessence field. We weren't lying," Shiro answers, trying to be as calm and as levelheaded as possible. "Most of this time we have been trying to find a way back to Earth. It's our planet. We—"

A tutting, disappointed noise.

Ezor's hand wrings tightly around Pidge's neck, choking the air from her until she wheezes and struggles, eyes bulging, knocking her heels against the reinforced steel wall. Hunk and Romelle and Allura cry out, kneeling up from their sitting positions while Krolia and Shiro and Keith advance forward, only to be blocked off by two of the three sentries guarding them. Lance tries to charge at Ezor again, only to be thrown off by the sentry-guard landing a fist across Lance's jaw, stunning him.

Pidge lets out a whimpering, revolted noise as Ezor's sloppy-wet lips glide over her facial wound, applying pressure and puckering, like a kiss of death.

"I guess you all aren't so _soft_ for this one after all."

" _NO_ —!"

Lance and Allura's shouts blend together.

The first droplet of venom entering Pidge's bloodstream hazes over her senses. She goes completely limp when Ezor releases her, sliding backwards against the brig's wall, moaning out breathlessly.

"Katie!" Shiro gets to her first, as soon as the guards and a self-satisfied Ezor and Zethrid leave and ram the door shut. He ends up with a shoulder weighed down against the darkly colored wall, calling out her name again in growing worry.

Keith joins him, along with the others. "Pidge, hey, try not to move—" he orders, when she attempts to get up, her eyelids fluttering, Pidge's color already draining.

"I-I think I'm good, I," her words faint away, as Pidge does, going sideways and resting against Lance's chest as he shifts her awkwardly with his wrists still restrained together. His panic doesn't seem to affect her. Pidge's eyelids droop further, her mouth hanging open and breathing shallowly. " _Aah_ —"

"She doesn't have long," Krolia mutters, receiving various stages of horrified looks from everybody else. "The only way to stop the venom from reaching her heart is to counteract it with the agent's blood." _Ezor's blood_ , they realize. Lance can feel himself trembling again, this time in adrenaline and foreboding. "She will need a direct injection of the venom _and_ blood into her system, or it won't save her life."

"Then we gotta get out of here!" Lance insists, his voice cracking.

Allura gazes mournfully between Pidge's body and him. "Lance—" A loud, crashing noise outside the door distracts all of them. And then it whirs _open_.

The mice chitter proudly, getting scooped up by Allura as the rest of Voltron and their associates peer around the corridor and manage to disable their red-glowing Galra restraints. "Uh, we gotta go _now_ , you guys!" Hunk yells, nodding to Pidge shuddering on her back and quickly turning an ugly, noticeable gray.

"Take her," Lance says gruffly, lifting Pidge and handing her over to Allura and Romelle. More than anything he doesn't want to leave her like this, but…

Krolia checks over her armor's equipment. "I'll get supplies we need," she announces.

Lance's eyes narrow. "I'll get Ezor," he mumbles, not ready to hear any _arguments_ about his decision. Nobody says anything at first, and then Keith steps towards him, grasping Lance's shoulder firmly, comfortingly.

"I'm coming with you."

For a split second, Lance thinks he's gonna absolutely lose it and _hug_ his soft-spoken leader and then inhales, holding his head up higher, nodding bravely.

 **.**

 **.**

It turns out he needed Keith to navigate their way around the ship, and then destroy the sentries attacking them out of nowhere and the hovering, triangular drones.

Zethrid goes missing, but they locate Ezor, dodging her pummeling blows and acrobatics. She laughs with a touch of maniacal, arrogant intent, whipping off her cloak — and in that split second, Keith comes up behind her, thrusting his bayard-sword into her torso as she shrieks, gasping when Keith's hand clutches her neck.

He lowers her head, _squeezing_ until bloody, milky venom spurts between Ezor's lips, trickling into a clear, long vial between Lance's fingers. "Thanks for the help," Lance quips tonelessly, watching as Keith tosses her onto the ship's floor.

She gurgles out another laugh, crooning and grinning with unbridled, twisted joy.

" _Your little friend is dead by now_ …"

The heat in Lance's chest vanishes, replacing with numbed ice.

"Not as dead as you are," he mumbles, eyeing her and then walking off, following Keith back towards the hanger-bay, ignoring the sounds of liquid-saturated howling.

 **.**

 **.**

Once they're in the safer and more isolated area, Keith passes off the vial to Krolia preparing an injection-syringe, as they discover Romelle and Shiro attending to an unresponsive Pidge, trying to wake her gently. Lance notices her face is covered in sweat and there's congealing blood leaking out of her nostrils and ears.

"This should work," Krolia says reassuringly, finding a vein in Pidge's neck-joint. He feels one of Hunk's arms draping around him, and Allura whispering out Lance's name, rubbing his back.

Once Ezor's blood-melded venom is flowing inside Pidge, she jerks in place, limbs flopping, but without opening her eyes. _Seizures_. Lance's red-rimmed eyes go huge.

"Pidge!" he shouts, getting restrained by Hunk's arm to his middle and Keith's hand clasping onto Lance's upper arm. Lance pants out, not able to use any violence against his friends, tears streaming down his face. " _Pidge_! Guys, no—!"

"It'll be okay, Lance. Just wait."

For all he knows it's a tick or a varga passing before Pidge finally stirs awake, no longer seizing on the floor or breathing irregularly, Krolia's fingers combing Pidge's amber-brown hair back from her eyes. " _Quiznak_ …" Pidge mutters, sniffling with a frown and rubbing under her nostrils. " _Why does everything taste like vomit_ …?"

Relief heats Lance's chest, dulling out the numbness. He practically crowds her, leaning over and hugging her, cradling the back of Pidge's head with his glove.

"Pidge, thank god…"

" _Told you I was good, you big baby_ …" Pidge murmurs, no longer greying, the corners of her mouth uplifting when their foreheads nudge together, their eyes and the surface of their lips meeting gently.

A quivering, watery laugh.

"Yeah," he murmurs back, smiling fondly. "Guess so."

 **.**

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* * *

 _Voltron isn't mine. OH BOY OH BOY! SEASON 7 WAS REALLY SOMETHING! I can't believe how good my Plance was watered! I highkey was not expecting it at all! :D Guys, I need some screams for Plance so if you enjoyed this and had an opinion on Season 7, come scream here! Any thoughts/comments always appreciated!  
_


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